Dream Belamy: A Novel

…


Hush now wee bairnie and sleep without fear,
For Angus will bring you a dream, my dear.


Can you no hush your weepin'?
All the wee lambs are sleepin'.


Birdies are nestlin', nestlin' taegether,
Dream Angus is hurtlin' through the heather.


Sweet the lavrock sings at morn,
Heraldin' in a bright new dawn.

Wee lambs, they coorie doon taegether
Alang with their ewies in the heather.
--Dream Angus, song



Dream Belamy



Belamy was at present nine years old, a very good age for adventures. She photographed the world each day with her large eyes, which sparkled whenever she learned something new. And every time somebody told her something wonderful, she would raise her ears slightly to allow each word to wind its way more quickly to its destination (which was her memory).

She lived in a small house which was accompanied on either side by another house which looked just like her own and all the other small houses on her street, all in a tidy row. The only way you could tell the difference between Belamy's house and any other was by the long pots of strawberries her mother kept hanging from every window, which flourished in these young summer months. While most other windows on the street were bare, Belamy's windows were hugged by red berries and were the sweetest smelling windows in the whole row, and probably, Belamy thought it was safe to think, even the next row over.

Now, I could tell you many more things about the world around Belamy; about her father, who was a traveling salesman and who always explored distant lands; about her mother, who stayed at home and wrote books which Belamy always got to read first; about her shepherd, Bernard, who loved to play with her and to be scratched behind the ears. But this story is not about the world around Belamy. It is a story about the world within Belamy; which, suffice it to say, is the most important thing about her, and is also the most fantastic. Because now, here is the truth:



Belamy kept a world of dreams.



Yes; unlike you and me, whose dreams have a distinct beginning when we go to sleep at night and end when we awake again in the morning, Belamy's dreams were stored in a safe place where she could visit them as she pleased during any time of the day. She did sleep as we do, otherwise her world would be much lacking in content. But whenever she awoke, her dreams would jump from her mind and onto a small square of her bedroom wall, instead of flitting away into the sunlight to vanish like a morning mist. When Belamy was awake, all she needed to do to visit her dreams was close her eyes as if she were about to sleep (to trick the dreams, of course) and crawl through the not-so-solid bit of wall, which she had outlined in soft blue chalk (to mark its place).



And now that you know the truth about Belamy, her adventure will begin.



It started on an ordinary morning, while Belamy stood in front of the entrance to her dream world. She was determined to visit a dream she had the previous night, because there was something that had troubled her during sleep and she wanted to take a closer look using her waking mind. She closed her bedroom door and knelt on the wooden floor in front of the spot she had clearly marked on her wall. Squeezing her eyes shut, she crawled until the hard floor beneath her turned into the spongy, foot-numbing ground of dreams. When she opened her eyes again, she was in her dream world.


Adventure One: Belamy Consults the Monster

Adventure Two: The Man with the Red Wings

Adventure Three: The Heroes of the City of Gold

Adventure Four: The Emperor Milo

Adventure Five: Rowen has a Clever Idea

Adventure Six: Boris and the Masquerade



Copyright 2010